Parnell Square redevelopment
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Loving the ping-ping between Sue and Alonso. Could we not agree that Temple Bar is part drinking den(s) and, in absence of anywhere else, part cultural quarter. Like Pilear, I never thought I could defend anything Haughian.
@Sue wrote:
I have indeed. Fair enough, a “drinking den” is a slightly provocative statement but a “cultural quarter” it ain’t. Other than the Irish Film Centre, there is no cultural institution of any note or value.
Ah now Sue, methinks you are stirring it up :p
A massive bus depot where Temple Bar is would have been awful.
Granted Temple Bar is more a stag party west bank than it is a left bank, but apart from the IFC, there is the Print Studios and artists studios, the Button Factory, the Childrens’ Ark, and some other worthwhile stuff – Green Building, though now dated, was nonetheless a good initiative…
Meanwhile this is all letting Dublin Bus off the hook – [gets on soapbox] – Dublin Bus are simply the worst land users imaginable. They have absolutely no cognisance as to how to use their sizable land bank effectively and efficiently – anytime during the day one can see how their buses choke up Parnell Square and Marlborough Street, meanwhile up at Broadstone during the day, it looks like this:
… and over at Summerhill, it appears like this:
Note the empty deserts of tarmac. Apart from idiotic land mis-usage Dublin Bus are also far from exemplary custodians of important architecture within their care, with Skipton Mulvany’s fine Egyptian Revival essay at Broadstone left like this – squalid, semi-derelict and covered with litter:
Truth of it is, far from another depot where Temple Bar is, it would be much better to get Dublin Bus to manage their own existing facilities in an accountable manner. This also includes cutting archaic working practises dating from the time of trams which left workers taking their break in around the pillar. The pillar is long gone, and so too should be consigned to the history bin any reactionary unions that try to stop the city from functioning for their own selfish ends…
ah hutton c’mon Summerhill and Broadstone are miiiiiiiiiiiles away from O Connell Street and therefore nowhere near the mythical land of An Lár. Surely you can’t expect all buses to strain their way up Parnell Sq and THEN go all the way up Granby row to Broadstone! crazy talk! As your photos show Broadstone is performing a very important role channeling rainwater and giving litter some decent private open space.
As for Temple Bar – the Arthouse, Project Arts Centre (still there?), Cultivate, recording studios, Temple Lane, IFC, music venues like Dorans and the Music Centre ~(button factory me arse), the food market, tonnes of specialist retail and restaurants, and the IFC. It’s a very very different place in the 9 to 5 than at night but sure Joe Duffy and The Star don’t write about that. Also, while not fully pedestrianised it’s the only pedestrian dominant place of that scale in Ireland, i’d proffer, open to correction. So while it doesn’t have an Abbey, a Gate or a National Concert Hall (which it was never intended to ) it’s the number and mix of uses which make it unique – still – despite all the boozers and the easy tabloid slurs. It contains a critical mass of variety, if that’s not an oxymoron, which add up to a cultural quarter. Don’t forget that while the stag and hen parties are staggering all over the shop at 4 am there are people tucked inside less “public” buildings writing songs, recording, painting and making movies etc 24/7.
@ctesiphon wrote:
That is quite disturbing.
BTW, when did Dublin Bus start washing their buses? A proper Dublin bus is thickly coated in grime. Do these people have no respect for tradition?
*I often had to open a window on the 78A to see if I was anywhere near my stop*.
Leaving the buses aside for the moment, Parnell Square must must be in the text books as how not to do an urban space.
The ratio of road surface to ‘square’ is absurd. Why did the Georgians put in racetrack width carriageways in the first place? Did they sit up on the piano nobiles gambling on, ‘Ben Hur’ style, sedan chair races around the square?
Then there’s the Garden of Remembrance. Every other capital city, with a revolutionary past, has a central square with a ‘great monument to the Republic’ and we get a Chelsea Garden Show exhibit with a kiddies swimming pool that you never see anybody use,
The Garden of Remembrance uses all the worst ideas in 20th century memorial architecture: The morbid classicism, the stiff manicured lawns, the regimented seating, the Zepplin Field steps and proto fuhrer podium, the leaden sculpture, railings painted in gold and royal blue. If this says anything about 1916, it’s how completely our cultural consciousness has become mainstream Anglo-Saxon.
I’ve seen the master plan (posted last year by Graham) and even though it looks far reaching, I don’t think it gets anywhere near the radical re-think that a place like Parnell Square needs.
If you look at the evolution of the square, it started out as a philantropic idea, was exploited as a marketing tool, suceeded as a high-end residential venture, developed as a social hub and then slid into terminal decline when fashion moved on and the funcional demands of the institutions began to encroach on the concept.
To tap into the urban potential, the square has to be re-made. As well as being filled up with haphazard buildings, the square never had a southern edge. That should be the first priority, Build a southern edge. Top quality Civic buildings would fit the bill, an extension of the hospital on the right, and the new Central Library (the one they’re trying to squeeze into the Ambassador) on the left. What’s left, the upper two thirds, should be re-planned as a, hard surface, urban square with pockets of trees, edgy pavilions, a sunken garden if necessary, a great monument to the Republic (definitely). The bus stand thing could even work as an designed-in element of a re-made civic square. It would guarantee constant footfall and keep the space busy and vibrant.
@alonso wrote:
As for Temple Bar – the Arthouse, Project Arts Centre (still there?), Cultivate, recording studios, Temple Lane, IFC, music venues like Dorans and the Music Centre ~(button factory me arse), the food market, tonnes of specialist retail and restaurants, and the IFC. It’s a very very different place in the 9 to 5 than at night but sure Joe Duffy and The Star don’t write about that. Also, while not fully pedestrianised it’s the only pedestrian dominant place of that scale in Ireland, i’d proffer, open to correction. So while it doesn’t have an Abbey, a Gate or a National Concert Hall (which it was never intended to ) it’s the number and mix of uses which make it unique – still – despite all the boozers and the easy tabloid slurs. It contains a critical mass of variety, if that’s not an oxymoron, which add up to a cultural quarter. Don’t forget that while the stag and hen parties are staggering all over the shop at 4 am there are people tucked inside less “public” buildings writing songs, recording, painting and making movies etc 24/7.
Spoken like a young Arthur O’Shaughnessy there, alonso. Very moving indeed. :p
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.
…Ode (excerpt)
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@gunter wrote:
. . . the leaden sculpture . . .
.I don’t agree with you regarding the Children of Lir; I don’t find it leaden, but more importantly, I don’t find it Anglo-Saxon, in fact, I don’t think the Anglo-Saxon world is united in how they commemorate their dead, American’s die for their friends and their memorials, with one famous, glorious, exception, are realistic figurative statues, even the Vietnam memorial has a little bronze action scene nearby, the wall seemed too weird when proposed to be allowed to stand alone. The British died for an ideal of valour and out of a social obligation and they favour expressionist statues and lists of names, we died for the dead and for a fairytale we only half believed and our most noted memorials are either graves, grave-like, or representations of myths.
Come on notjim, those swans are never gettin’ off the ground.
OK the sculpture has qualities, but flight isn’t one of them and anyway, it’s the whole assembly that doesn’t work. It feels like a cemetery, but there’s no graves. The new steps down opp. the gallery help, but it’s such a waste of an urban space.
@gunter wrote:
Come on notjim, those swans are never gettin’ off the ground.
OK the sculpture has qualities, but flight isn’t one of them and anyway, it’s the whole assembly that doesn’t work. It feels like a cemetery, but there’s no graves. The new steps down opp. the gallery help, but it’s such a waste of an urban space.
“It feels like a cemetery”, exactly; my point was not that it was a good memorial but that it wasn’t Anglo-Saxon in that it typified the Irish memorial language of graves and legends.
Separately, I think the sculpture has a dynamics, bursting, quality which contrasts enjoyably with the heaviness of the material, I also think people are generally fond of, sentimental about, the whole ensemble because of its weird Ireland-in-the-60s atmosphere and because it is a relic of a time when Irish Republicanism could be celebrate in such a goofy, unthinking way. Certainly those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s can’t help but feel a sort of envy for a childishness we were denied.
I think you are getting out of the habit of reading my posts before replying to them!
@notjim wrote:
I think you are getting out of the habit of reading my posts before replying to them!
I read your post, you just went off on a tangent and I chose not to follow.
For the record, and since we’re swinging handbags here, you picked out the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ phrase from my post, (possibly because you may have issues in that direction) and you ignored the substance of what I was saying.
I will think about what you said though and I will go back down there, I missed it’s ‘dynamic, bursting quality’ the last time I was there.
@gunter wrote:
For the record, and since we’re swinging handbags here,
I thought exclamation marks where synonymous with smilies, no?
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.yeh i think that’s what Charlie said to CIE alright. Either that or “Fuck off with your buses. I am a man of fcking culture – PJ get me my coat, I’m going to Paris to buy some fcking shirts…” etc etc (it sounds funnier if you have Dermot Morgan’s voice in your head saying it)
regarding the picture of the state that Broadstone station is in, I am thoroughly shocked and appauled
16/11/2009
Well we can safely assume now that the Parnell Square Framework Plan is well and truly defunct. If I recall correctly, work was just about to get underway c. 2006-2007 on the public domain of the Cavendish Row side, before halting in its tracks – well before the downturn took hold. Anyone remember why?
Looking back in hindsight at the generally well-considered plan, complied by Howley Harrington Architects in 2004 and published in February 2005, the figures bandied about for some works were staggering, including an eye-popping €2.3 million just for repaving, coach parking provision and planting a few trees on Palace Row! The Celtic Tiger on turbo.
Sadly, not even non-capital intensive projects like improving the curtilage and presentation of the Rotunda have come about. With a number of recent highly dubious facade re-pointing jobs on the west side of Parnell Square, which in the long term actually degrade the quality of urban fabric, it could be argued that the square has degenerated further since the publication of the report.
The same is true of its wider environment, including Parnell Street east, a grand, well-proportioned thoroughfare with an historic building stock of such strength and character as to make one ache at its dilapidated potential.
This is a street that is grossly underrated by planners; one of the greatest assets to the north inner city if its strengths were capitalised on. Its buildings, as shown by gunter on the Dutch Billy thread, date from as far back as the early 18th century, with many more of later Georgian and Victorian origin. This is one of the best streets on the north side of the city precisely because it hasn’t received any large-scale ‘regeneration’ as with Parnell Street to the west.
In spite of a number of sites being tax-incentivised, and being located in the O’Connell Street ACA, ironically nothing but corrosive works have transpired here over the past decade. Most perplexing of all is the recent rendering over in cement of this charming cluster of late Georgian houses, all Protected Structures, at the junction with O’Connell Street.
A handsome array of buildings that encapsulates in a nutshell the dominant building typology of Dublin, until recently the houses featured a loose coat of render, apparently a Victorian lime plaster, which almost certainly would have walked off the buildings with a decent hand chisel and a mallet.
As the Dublin climate already tried to show us.
Also a beautiful narrow house here with roof profile intact and Wyatt windows, one of the very last of its kind in the city.
The potential for a full-on restoration of these merchant houses to their original brick-faced appearance is now almost certainly lost with the application of a strong cemetitious render. Of course no planning permission whatever was applied for. The owner saw fit to sit on these derelict protected buildings for probably over a decade, and then carry out the most botched job conceivable to apply to such a series of buildings. And they’re still empty. The dingy vacant scaffold erected over them earlier this year should have set alarm bells ringing…
If DCC had kept the pressure on owners on Parnell Street through incentivising conservation and restoration works with grant funding, tax carrots, and offers of internal guidance and support, this may very well never have happened. The same can be said of the grubby hotel next door, probably owned by a former Garda, gaming merchant or farmer, who recently saw fit, on Protected Structures, in an ACA, to ‘tart up’ the frontage by applying yet another layer of garish paint over the brickwork. The result.
There doesn’t seem to be an understanding that standard laws of economics do not work, and never will work, in situations and city areas such as these. A concerted effort must be made by a planning authority to effect change on the ground, by contacting owners, holding discussions, finding out stakeholders’ long term plans and proposals, outlining all available options, offer constructive support, and use the stick of CPO if necessary in the case of derelict sites. Instead however, we get opportunist, speculative applications trickling in on the whim of owners, and when they do, inevitably propose lowest common denominator of infill trash. As charted here before, this behemoth of a mega-apartment scheme, tax-incentivised using public funds, with only a miniscule fraction of a street frontage into Parnell Street, gave this back to the citizens of Dublin. Simply outrageous.
The marvelous potential for a gracious Georgian streetscape of red brick, with marching ranks of correct sash windows and well-proportioned shopfronts, is waiting to be realised here, as much as it is sadly being eroded by the day. If this terrace was properly tackled, it would be the making of Parnell Street.
Sadly the new Draft Development Plan doesnt offer very much to Parnell Street. It is suggesting supoporting the development of a mini Chinatown on the street. I must see if the Parnel Sq Framework is mentioned.
If I remember rightly the planned improvements were all postponed due to the uncertainty of Metro North and Luas BX. In fairness to DCC there is no point in spending €3m on paving etc if the RPA are going to come along and rip it all up.
The new Draft Dev Plan will include a policy to upgrade the public domain of the entire Grand Civic route from Parnell Sq to Christchurch.
GrahamH: with my rapidly declining first-hand experience of the city, I’ve refrained from posting much recently, but need to congratulate you once again on an excoriatingly accurate anlysis of the state of PStE; hope and vision everywhere seem to be taking a holiday at the moment. How can Dublin planners live with themselves?
I don’t envy their job, but the wider culture appears to be one of reaction rather than proaction. Even when area plans and policies such as ACAs are put in place, these constructive measures are considered to be ‘done and dusted’, where one can sit back with yet another objective of the Development Plan ‘sorted’. Simply hoping for the best isn’t enough with these measures, and it applies to all areas, whether it be Grafton Street or Marlborough Street. Proactive efforts have to be made to use these tools, rather than hope they will become relevant when necessary (and brushed under the carpet when not wanted, as with Carlton).
Ah of course it was Metro that halted works, Stephen – doh! Yes the delay is naturally understandable, but again another victim of the RPA effectively holding the ceremonial core of the city to ransom in respect of public domain improvement. If this continues, any provisions in the next Development Plan for the so-called Grand Civic Thoroughfare will soon be obsolete too! The Draft Plan makes a number of references to the north Georgian core and the need for its ‘protection’, particularly Parnell Square and Mountjoy Square – though one would have thought its rehabilitation would be a more appropriate term.
At least plans for the Dublin City Library in the Ambassador are still being drafted, apparently by Seán Harrington Architects – if now under tighter financial constraints – which will act as a major stimulus for the area. I can’t wait to see it unfold. One of the best public decisions made for Dublin city centre in the past decade. The quietest ones tend to be.
I suppose a proactive measure for Parnell Street etc would be if people made submissions on the Draft Plan calling for its rehabilitation and supporting the Parnell Sq Framework. The Draft Plan goes on display at the end Dec. Plenty of tine over Christmas for people to put together short subvmissions. Put your ink where you mouth is Archiseekers!
@GrahamH wrote:
16/11/2009
Also a beautiful narrow house here with roof profile intact and
Wyatt windows, one of the very last of its kind in the city.
You’re building up quite a collection of these slim, bordering on skinny, elegant beauties there Graham.;)
I remember when this one had a superb simple shopfront to go with it’s beatifully graduated Wyatt windows and then one day it was gone, replaced by a sheet of ply, and I have no picture of it.
As Graham says, these three houses [nos. 76, 77 + 78] offer a virtual glossary of Dublin Georgian in a single tableau, 10m from the corner of O’Connell Street . . . . . or could if they were carefully conserved.
The next four houses in the terrace are perhaps marginally less interesting, in that they have less variation, but again I would totally agree with Graham that a city sponsored programme of facade conservation would do wonders for the streetscape, the public realm, and perhaps give the whole north end of the O’Connell Street zone a much needed lift.
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